SALISBURY – When SU sophomore Thomas Cirillo arrived on the Salisbury campus in 2012, he wasn’t yet ready to make a big contribution to the Sea Gulls men’s lacrosse team.

He was a little out of shape, a little slow and he needed to work on his fundamentals.

But after throwing himself into getting better heading into his sophomore season, Cirillo shined in the fall, and now as just a sophomore has become a dangerous cog in the Sea Gulls offense with 19 goals and six assists playing mostly on the second midfield line.

“His evolution as a player, his understanding the game, his skills have all gotten better,” coach Jim Berkman said. “He has one of the best overhand shots on the team and he can definitely rip the ball. Any time he is in that 15-yard radius and his hands are free, he is a real threat to score.”

Recruited to the Sea Gulls by a former assistant coach, Cirillo arrived on campus after a standout career at Eastchester High School in Eastchester, N.Y., and was quickly backhanded by the reality of the talent on the squad.

Even though the team had lost more than 95 percent of it’s offense from the year before, he played in just nine games as a freshman, picking up a pair of goals and a pair of assists.

“It is a growing process and I think everyone has to go through it,” Cirillo said. “I probably speak for everyone on this team that we have probably been some of the best if not the best players on our teams coming in. To not be in that role is weird, but a process you have got to go through, and it gives you a better respect for it when you get there.”

He described his game an unorthodox, ugly and goofy. He thinks he looks like a reindeer running down the field and he said he has a good overhand shot with his right hand, which he relies on too much. But he’s not afraid to run into contact when he is dodging.

By the time fall practice came around this season, Cirillo had begun to transform into a different player. Berkman said his shot went from “decent” to “very good,” while he outscored the rest of the team during the fall.

That was when Berkman first started to think about the impact he may make in the lineup this season.

“I feel like even though I’m just a sophomore right now, we have a lot of new faces on this team,” he said. “We are all great friends and I feel like we just took a leadership role from the get go, because there are so many new faces. There are probably 20 new guys on this team, so even though we are sophomores, we are almost like the older guys on the team.”

Cirillo started the year on the second midfield line with players like Brandon Kendrick and Brady Dashiell, but he’s ended up stepping into the first line with Greg Korvin during the last four games due to injury.

The surprise benefit to the change has been that on the first line, senior transfer Donovan Lange draws the long pole defender, and that leaves Cirillo a little more room to get his shot off.

He also appreciates the fact that the offense has a number of players who can find the net, and that has also helped his game evolve.

Berkman has liked what he saw in that first line, so now with Korvin back, he still expects to play Cirillo there rotating in four instead of three.

For Cirillo, the word from the beginning may have been potential and despite his great strides, Berkman still thinks he has a a lot of room to get better. He is already getting off about six shots a game even playing exclusively. And Berkman makes sure to remind him of every opportunity he loses by not going left.

It’s because he knows that developing more of a left hand would make Cirillo twice as dangerous next season, and he doesn’t feel like he’s far off. He likes his sophomore’s mechanics with the left and just thinks Cirillo needs to have more confidence in it.

But regardless of the reward of working his way onto the second and then the first midfield line and seeing his contribution on offense continue to increase, he knows his career at SU will boil down to one thing — titles.

When he was being recruited, the team won a national title.

After he committed, they won another.

But he doesn’t have his own yet.

“(The history) is awesome,” Cirillo said. “It is something I really want to happen for all of us — for this team. I think we have the potential and I think we are going to do it.”